VTT Biotechnology - Articles and news items

The project ‘DairyNET – Hygiene control in dairies’ was built both on common synergy tasks performed in all Nordic countries and on national research studies. The synergy tasks dealt with rapid detection of cleaning agents and disinfectants residues, detection of organic soil in processing equipment hot spots and detection of moulds contaminating cheese. The national research dealt with a checklist for hygiene control; milk quality through the whole process line; air quality; contamination routes for Listeria; quality of process waters; efficiency of CIP procedures; hygiene in supply systems; ultrasound cleaning procedures; bacterial resistance to disinfectants; hygienic design and integrated hygiene systems.

The brewing industry has changed from local, small breweries to global companies and fully automated plants. Our knowledge on biological processes of the barley-to-beer chain and tools to control the process and product quality, benefit from the development of basic sciences and engineering.

Beer has been brewed for thousands of years. For a long time beer production was, however, pure cookery. The development of the brewing industry began in the 19th century – largely as a consequence of the development of technology in general. The scientific basis of beer brewing was also laid at that time. Sciences such as biochemistry and microbiology benefited greatly from the early malting and brewing research that was driven by the need to understand biological processes such as germination, mashing and fermentation. Later the term biotechnology was invented meaning industrial application of living cells and combining basic sciences with engineering. Nowadays the definition of biotechnology is even wider and covers the research and development of biological processes on a genetic and molecular level.